Education Next is a journal of opinion and research about education policy.

The Resilience of Common Core

I keep up on Common Core news religiously. In the last few weeks, I’ve amassed a stack of 30 articles and reports, trying to come up with a clever, cogent argument for what they mean when considered together.

With so many tangled veins in the debate—and with so much venom coursing through each—I almost gave up. But this morning, while reading a new account of supposedly mounting state-level opposition, it hit me: at least for the moment, the common element of recent Common Core news is the resilience of the standards themselves.

When I looked across all of the news, I was struck by the cacophony of political sound and fury amounting, in the end, to almost nothing. The coverage reminded me of the well-orchestrated pre-fight hype of a heavyweight championship bout—a match ultimately memorable not for the dramatic or unexpected outcome but for the staged antics at the weigh-in or the endless jawboning from both camps.

With coverage like this, you’d think Common Core’s fate was daily hanging in the balance—that pro and con forces were trading massive victories, swapping gains with each successive battle. But that’s emphatically not happening.

Implementation is certainly where you’ll find the heads of state superintendents. For example, see this panel discussion among four state chiefs on bringing the standards to life in the classroom. Kathleen Porter-Magee, who’s been writing smartly about implementation for ages now, recently penned a piece about being mindful of how the standards look to teachers, students, and families.

Well, let’s hold off on the “success” of Common Core until parents get the reality check that some legislatures have now had. Because when people – parents, community members, legislators – see what Common Core is (and its huge costs), there may be an ever-bigger pushback.